Definition of hardscrabble in English:

adjective

I yearn for those days with the same desperate yearning I felt then: to balloon away in the wind, away from the hardscrabble farm, with only Dawn in the basket with me, and me, in her eyes, transformed, beautified.

But it's a triumphant story for the foot soldiers, the women who had dead-end lives, working in factories or on hardscrabble farms.

Prior to the development of the industry, Stony Creek had been a village of hardscrabble subsistence farms and a small, local fish and shellfish industry.